Book Description

Since its composition in Washington’s Willard Hotel in 1861, Julia Ward Howe's "Battle Hymn of the Republic" has been used to make America and its wars sacred. Few Americans reflect on its violent and redemptive imagery, drawn freely from prophetic passages of the Old and New Testaments, and fewer still think about the implications of that apocalyptic language for how Americans interpret who they are and what they owe the world.

In A Fiery Gospel, Richard M. Gamble describes how this camp-meeting tune, paired with Howe's evocative lyrics, became one of the most effective instruments of religious nationalism. He takes the reader back to the song's origins during the Civil War, and reveals how those political and military circumstances launched the song's incredible career in American public life. Gamble deftly considers the idea behind the song—humming the tune, reading the music for us—all while reveling in the multiplicity of meanings of and uses to which Howe's lyrics have been put. "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" has been versatile enough to match the needs of Civil Rights activists and conservative nationalists, war hawks and peaceniks, as well as Europeans and Americans. This varied career shows readers much about the shifting shape of American righteousness. Yet it is, argues Gamble, the creator of the song herself—her Abolitionist household, Unitarian theology, and Romantic and nationalist sensibilities—that is the true conductor of this most American of war songs.

A Fiery Gospel depicts most vividly the surprising genealogy of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," and its sure and certain position as a cultural piece in the uncertain amalgam that was and is American civil religion.

"Lively.... Readers with an interest in 19th-century American religious and political popular culture will enjoy this biography of a hymn."

Publishers Weekly

"An accessible, engaging, and above all informative volume."

The Collegian

"In this engagingly written and thoroughly researched book, Richard M. Gamble traces the history of Julia Ward Howe's "Battle Hymn of the Republic" from its conception at the outset of the Civil War though the beginning of the 21st century."

Civil War Book Review

"Richard Gamble's amazing story of a heroic song, beautifully told and thoroughly researched, will appeal to readers with a wide range of interests, including American history and literature,  patriotism, women's achievements, popular culture, and Biblical religion."

Daniel Walker Howe, Pulitzer-Prize-winning author of What Hath God Wrought

"A Fiery Gospel tells the complex and fascinating story of Julia Ward Howe's great national hymn, but this book is so much more. Like his earlier work on the idea of the United States as a city on a hill, Richard M. Gamble uses the 'Battle Hymn of the Republic' to challenge us to think deeply and historically about the construction of American identity."

John Fea, author of Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?

"We think we know 'The Battle Hymn of the Republic', but Richard Gamble better acquaints us with the mostly unknown author, Julia Ward Howe, and the almost entirely unknown history of her iconic poem. The result is a treasure trove of insight on Howe and her anthem, and the dubious career of American religious nationalism."

Mark Noll, author of In the Beginning Was the Word

 “While recognizing the power of the ‘Battle Hymn’ to rouse soldiers and civilians in a just war or cause, Mr. Gamble clearly intends ‘A Fiery Gospel’ as a cautionary tale. ‘Stripped of its historical meaning,” he writes, the ‘Battle Hymn’ can become ‘a blank screen onto which we can project anything we wish. Or it becomes a mirror in which we see only ourselves.’

Ken Emerson, Wall Street Journal